The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

A top-rate novel of drugs, love and treachery from an author at the height of his powers. Blind Howard, an ex-RAF veteran, possesses an acute sense of awareness, and can see almost better than the sighted. Morse code patterns his universe and keeps his mind tuned sharp to the big and sometimes bad world. Laura, his ever-doting wife, is loveliness personified. Things start to change when he meets the nefarious Richard. Morse is the common denominator of the alliance, but before long Howard's world of dots and dashes, dits and dahs takes on new darker horizons when he clicks into a drugs racket which means leaving his caring wife for a wild voyage in search of a woman whose voice he has fallen in love with; and a sea-journey with maverick sailors on a heroin heist.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Alan Sillitoe was an English writer, one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s (although he, in common with most of the other writers to whom the label was applied, had never welcomed it).
For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sil...

Reviews

[The Armchair Nihilist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blinded in the closing months of the Second World War Howard has spent the four decades since marooned in a small seaside town with his stoic and supportive wife Laura. In between pottering around his only escape from this humdrum routine is through his old wireless set which opens up a gateway to a crackling alternate universe of morse signals, fragmentary voices and half-imagined other worlds. The couple have long since resigned themselves to life in the doldrums until their quiet existence is capsized by a chance encounter with Richard, a shady charmer who also eavesdrops on the airwaves but with mysterious ulterior motives.

In the first half of “The German Numbers Woman” Sillitoe explores the unquiet depths brooding beneath the surface of these seemingly calm provincial lives. There are also vivid depictions of Howard navigating his way through the world using his enhanced senses to compensate for the loss of his sight. Sillitoe’s experience as a radio operator imbues his descriptions of the arcane and now largely obsolete technology of radiotelegraphy with an enthusiasm that makes it engaging even to clueless non-specialists like me. The book is most effective in this opening part in which Sillitoe’s writing remains grounded in the social realism for which he was renowned. Latterly the action ships out to sea accompanied by a rum crew of villains and while the pace quickens the narrative becomes progressively less convincing with events and characters reminiscent of seventies TV drama rather than real life.

This late addition to Sillitoe’s prolific output is something of a stylistic departure in which he experiments by blending his familiar kitchen sink drama with something like a Wilbur Smith high seas crime thriller but he flounders in these unfamiliar waters and the result is a somewhat uneven oil-and-water mix. Despite this it remains readable throughout and I kept turning the pages to the end even as the sea-faring plot grew increasingly implausible.